1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a storage apparatus, in particular, to a storage apparatus that can be fitted with any housing and can easily be modularized.
2. Description of Related Art
With the development of computer technology, computers have become indispensable for most people's life, and thus how to transfer files between different computers has become one of the daily-life issues. Due to the development in application of multimedia, the resulting files are getting increasingly larger. Although a magnetic disk of 1.44 MB is convenient to carry, the capacity thereof does not meet the requirement of capacity demand. On the other hand, while the hard disks in computers have a large capacity, they are inconvenient for the user to carry with due to their large volumes. Recently, as the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface gets popularized and the flash memory gets less expensive, a storage apparatus with a large capacity, a good compatibility, and a convenient portability has appeared, which is called a flash drive or a USB Flash Disk. Such a storage apparatus allows the user to carry out data transfer between different computers or storage apparatus conveniently.
FIG. 1 is a schematic structural view of a conventional storage apparatus 100. Referring to FIG. 1, the storage apparatus 100 includes a circuit board 110 and a set of housing 120. The circuit board 110 includes a docking portion 112, a control unit 114, and a flash memory 116. The docking portion 112 serves as a connection port for USB, the control unit 114 is used to control the flash memory 116 to carry out data read and write, and the flash memory 116 is used for data storage.
However, as the docking portion 112 of the storage apparatus 100 is directly fixed on the circuit board 110, and the circuit board 110 also has electronic components such as the control unit 114 and the flash memory 116, the circuit board 110 must have a certain area and length to support the electronic components. Since the circuit board 110 must have a certain area and length, the apparent volume of the storage module 100 is limited and cannot get further reduced.
Accordingly, another storage module having smaller apparent volume has appeared. FIG. 2 is a schematic structural view of another conventional storage apparatus 200. Referring to FIG. 2, the apparatus 200 includes a circuit board 210, a docking portion 220, and a housing 230. As for the circuit board 210, a System in Package (SIP) technology is employed to construct various types of electronic elements on the circuit board 210 into a systematic integrated package by the use of plastic, metal, or ceramics material, so as to protect the electronic elements in the package structure. The storage apparatus 200 can be easily modularized and manufactured in mass due to the employment of the systematic package.
However, as in the systematic package, all the electronic elements are packaged into a package structure, the package structure cannot get repaired and would be simply discarded when one of the elements therein fails. On the other hand, in the manufacture process for the package structure, once an error has occurred in the process, it is difficult to get reworked. Thus, the yield of the packaging process directly impacts the manufacturing cost of the storage module 200.